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<TITLE>Berners-Lee: Talk at Bush Symposium: Notes</TITLE>
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<P>
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<A href="/"><IMG ALT="W3C" SRC="../../Icons/WWW/w3c_48x48.gif" WIDTH="48"
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HEIGHT="48" BORDER="0">
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<HR>
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<P>
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<H1>
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<A href="Overview.html">Hypertext and Our Collective Destiny</A>
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</H1>
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<ADDRESS>
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Tim Berners-Lee, 12 October 1995
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</ADDRESS>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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<I>A talk in which I felt I had ben asked only to say things I hadn't said
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before. It was part of
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<A HREF="http://www-evat.mit.edu/bush/index.html">symposium</A> at MIT arranged
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by Andy Van Dam in honor of the 50th anniversary of Vannevar Bush's visionary
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<A HREF="http://www.isg.sfu.ca/~duchier/misc/vbush/">article</A> "As We May
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Think" in the Atlantic monthly in 1945. Various gurus from the history of
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hypertext were assembled, to talk and be taped.</I>
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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(This is a text approximating to the talk)
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<P>
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<UL>
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<LI>
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<A href="Abstract.html">Abstract</A>
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</UL>
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<P>
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It is a great honor for me to be invited to join you in celebrating Vannevar
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Bush, and especially to do so alongside our great gurus of hypertext. I feel
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like a steam locomotive designer in the presence of Watt and Charles and
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Boyle, discussing the significance of some remarks of Newton's.
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<P>
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Anyone who reads over the "Atlantic Monthly" article today will have been
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struck with the distance and accuracy of Bush's vision, and at the same time
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the things (such as the general purpose computer) which were just around
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the corner but the awareness of which he did not have the benefit. I don't
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want to go over this in detail, in the hope that others will also in part
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and together, each picking out things which strike us particularly, we will
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give an interesting if not complete commentary on his work.
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<P>
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It's interesting to me to see the core problem which he starts and from which
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he derives the need for the MEMEX. It's interesting because sometimes seemingly
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very related contributions to the networking and hypertext fields have come
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from apparently different problems. Ted Nelson, who coined the word, described
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hypertext from the literary point of view (with particular emphasis on authors
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getting just rewards for their work), while Doug Englebart with Augment,
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and I largely with the Web, were looking at helping groups of people work
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together.
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<P>
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For Bush, the daunting challenge for humanity was to cope with the awful
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growth of what he called "the record". He considered the plight of a researcher
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beset by so much research that despite narrowing his field, he could not
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hope to read all the relevant material. He was already feeling the threat
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of the information overload in 1945 -- that's before digital computers were
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around. The conclusion of his article suggests that the future of the world
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was, he felt, at stake. (Perhaps it was indicative of the times that the
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researcher in such a key role for society.) The thought I discuss with you
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today is that though the MEMEX is with is, whether we as a result feel very
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much more confident about our destiny.
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<P>
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Bush presented the problem from the point of view of a single researcher,
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and he provided a solution for a single researcher. The MEMEX was a machine
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which allowed an individual to store, rapidly retrieve documents, and to
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store and rapidly follow random associations between pairs of documents.
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<P>
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To a large part we have MEMEXes on our desks today. We have not yet seen
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the wide scale deployment of easy human interfaces for editing hypertext
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and making links. (I find this constantly frustrating, but always assume
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will be cured by cheap commercial products within the year.) In part the
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speed of the net has replaced the size of the person record store, but otherwise
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a web browser with an editor gives quite a good substitute for a MEMEX.
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<P>
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It is, then, a good time 50 years on to sit back and consider to what extent
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we have actually made life easier. We have access to information: but have
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we been solving problems? Well, there are many things it is much easier for
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individuals today than 5 years ago. Personally I don't feel that the web
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has made great strides in helping us work as a global team.
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<H2>
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Dreams
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</H2>
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<P>
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Perhaps I should explain where I'm coming from. I had (and still have) a
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dream that the web could be less of a television channel and more of an
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interactive sea of shared knowledge. I imagine it immersing us as a warm,
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friendly environment made of the things we and our friends have seen, heard,
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believe or have figured out. I would like it to bring our friends and colleagues
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closer, in that by working on this knowledge together we can come to better
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understandings. If misunderstandings are the cause of many of the world's
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woes, then can we not work them out in cyberspace. And, having worked them
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out, we leave for those who follow a trail of our reasoning and assumptions
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for them to adopt, or correct.
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<P>
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The initial web work was driven largely by my working on projects with people
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in remote sites. These people had great enthusiasm but little time or travel
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budget. (Also, as a technologists, we would all want to focus on the technical
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problems, leaving human interaction to the strictly necessary.) The dream
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is that if everybody works from day to day using the web as their notebook,
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mailer and calendar, (just as Englebart's NLS/Augment system allowed one
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to, for example) then the scaling problems of teams and organizations could
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somehow be solved. This is a dream.
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<H2>
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Team Management
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</H2>
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<P>
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You are probably all familiar with a few organizations which have grown from
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a couple of people to pass 50 or 60. You've probably noticed the sighs of
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the staff as they realize that suddenly they don't know everyone. You've
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seen projects run amok and noone know why. You've seen them leave and start
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small companies. You've seen books about it in airport bookstores.
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<P>
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Management of a growing team is a problem in a class which we can refer to
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as management-complete problems. Problems in this domain do not surcomb to
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technical analysis, but can be tackled to some degree of accuracy by means
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of what is called a "management fad". A fad is a heuristic which enjoys the
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trust of those who employ it. An essential element of a fad is that it forces
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those involved to think about the problem, and therefore in principle get
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a lot closer to a good solution than they would have done otherwise.
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<P>
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But seriously, history is the history of mankind trying to work together
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on every scale and doing more or less well. The concern, that we "perish
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in conflict" behind Bush's closing paragraph is quite understandable when
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dated 1945 and not unreasonable now. If we can find a tool for the "self-managing
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team(tm)" then we will have done well. But we should be aware that the political
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process, education, and much social activity has similar scaling problems
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and might also be worth a thought.
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<H2>
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Problems
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</H2>
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<P>
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If, even given a MEMEX, we have not made progress in working in groups, then
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clearly we can blame the lack of good collaborative software, navigational
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tools, and the fact that not every one of the billions of people on the earth
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has an internet-connected computer.
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<P>
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Suppose they did. Apart from the utter horror of having nowhere to turn without
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seeing one of those little MEMEXes, would our problems be solved anyway?
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(Incidentally, I'm assuming here that some quirks of the current software
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are ironed out. One of these if that for some reason one cannot edit hypertext
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within a browser, and instead one must resort to the neolithic practise of
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editing the HTML source file by hand to make links. There is nothing I consider
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stranger than the call in a local "Help Wanted" section of the paper for
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HTML writers!)
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<P>
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... Suppose then all these minor problems are cleared up, would we be seriously
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empowered as Bush would like us to be, as a whole?
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<P>
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Let's think about scaling problems. Let's think of some large numbers. The
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number of web documents. The number of people in the world. The number of
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neurons in the brian. We're thinking of lots of things all connected together.
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Web objects, people and neurons all have the ability to have random associations.
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The neurons seem to work (on a good day) as a integrated team. The people
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do in parts. The web documents just sit there.
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<P>
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But pretty soon the web documents will start getting up and wandering around.
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<P>
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<I>[expand on mobile code]</I>
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<P>
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So when web objects become mobile, and start wandering around and interacting
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with each other, would you now put much money on them making sense as a whole?
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<P>
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<H2>
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Analogies
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</H2>
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<P>
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We can draw some analogies, of course. Where people have relationships (of
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various sorts), web documents have links, and neurons have synapses. People
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and documents tend to be locally grouped into hierarchical forms; neurons
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in the brian have a large-scale structure but we don't know much about the
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details. In the case of the neurons and the people, there have been analogies
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drawn (Minsky in Society of Mind, for example). There have been plenty of
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analogies between drawn between the web and biological systems: George Bret
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of the Clearinghouse for Networked Information Discovery and Retrieval refers
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to it all as Kudzu. Someone even drew my attention to an article on a virus
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outbreak saying that it was spreading like the Internet! Douglas Hofstadter
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compares the mind to an anthill...
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<P>
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Ants, Neurons, objects, particles, people. In each case, the whole operates
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only because the parts interoperate. The behaviour of the whole is in some
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way dictated by the rules of behaviour of the parts. This may be a view
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influenced too much by physics, but I find it useful. It makes you think
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about how you predict the rules of the whole from the rules of the parts,
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and then as a global engineer (constitution writer, etc) how you can phrase
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the local laws to engender the global behaviour he desires.
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<P>
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For people, we call these rules variously the constitution, laws, or codes
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of ethics, for example. These rules are things which are accepted across
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the board. For particles, we call then the laws of physics. For web objects
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they are the protocol standards.
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<P>
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And equally as we have become used to these analogies, we know their limitations.
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We know that data objects have been ineffective at emulating brains. We know
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that people's behaviour is something specially different from the machinations
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of the computer, or the interactions of identical nameless particles. [...]
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<H2>
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Associations
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</H2>
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<P>
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Vannevar Bush introduced the idea of mechanising the representation of random
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associations. In this festschrift occasion, let's look at what associations
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we have with "association".
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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Association - Connection - Liaison - Nexus - Tie - Link
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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What links do we have with "link"?
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<P>
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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Link - Confusion
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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.. or so it was for many when the web seemed at first to threaten the orderly
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hierarchical world.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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Link - Coolness
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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as it later became as the "click here" brigade seized and were seized by
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the popular imagination.
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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Link - Readership
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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is what it meant for the authors of the targets of links. Every link brought
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more readers. For some, this was an ego boost. For others, it implied academic
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respectability of the new <I>de facto</I> citation index.
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<P>
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For those who sold information, products or advertising space, this meant
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<BLOCKQUOTE>
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Link - $
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</BLOCKQUOTE>
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<P>
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Now that is an interesting connection. The link is a unit of connectivity
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in hypertext. The dollar (ECU or whatever) is a unit of behaviour in the
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market. It is a unit in the market economy protocol which defines in part
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the behaviour of people. So here we see a connection between a world of objects
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and the microcosm of people. There many such connections, it is just that
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a relationship between links and dollars connects the simplest part of the
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hypertext rules up to the simplest human social rules, and so is easier to
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analyse. In fact, the web influences how we live, and how we live should
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(when we clear up the few advances I mentioned) influence the web in many
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less [materialistic] ways.
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<P>
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There is no question that global hypertext influences people. We've seen
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the reactions: great feelings of empowerment. (Empowerment is a 1990s word
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for what you feel -- for example when you first meet global hypertext). And
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misgivings, fear, despair for a normal healthy life. [Similarly, perhaps
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less obviously, the web is influenced by society.] Social changes change
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the organisations into which we are grouped, the names of documents change,
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and links break. Systems only fly which will work socially. Nothing works
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which requires the immediate buy-in of the entire world: technological change
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ripples through the social structure.
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<P>
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<HR>
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<H2>
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Engineering
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</H2>
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<P>
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We are constantly refining the microscopic rules. Governments are constantly
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changing the laws -- and hoping that people will follow them. Bodies such
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as the World Wide Web Consortium are evolving the protocols, and trying to
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arrange for developers to follow them. We engineer the microscopic rules
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in the hope that the end result will be a macroscopic effect that will satisfy
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us. We are little like physicists tweaking the gas laws, and hoping that
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tomorrow the atmosphere won't accidentally condense into a small blob.
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<P>
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For society we have goals which are expressed in terms of the individual:
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fairness, rights to speak, health. We have constraints which are expressed
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in terms of the whole, such as global peace, the safety of the race. On a
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humbler level protocol designers have local constraints such as
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platform-independence, vendor-neutrality, interoperability, and global ones
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such as system stability and graceful decay, and how the system as a whole
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looks to a user. Now it seems that in order to achieve the goal of Vannevar
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Bush, of growing in race experience before we perish in conflict, we need
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to change the way we may think as we change the way the machines operate.
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<P>
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The problem Bush was addressing, or the problem of the individual researcher,
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was one of system topology. The poor person has successively narrowed and
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narrowed his or her field of interest in order to cope with the information
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overload, and soon is connected only to things of very local interest. [pic]
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The topology clearly doesn't work, because there is no path for the transfer
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of knowledge from one discipline and the next. In order for us to make progress,
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we have to think about topological features of large systems, for machines
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and for people.
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<P>
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<H3>
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Decentralization
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</H3>
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<P>
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There are some common properties between human systems and networked systems
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which we are already beginning to appreciate. The internet grew as a
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decentralized system. Its design was tasked by the US military, a centrally
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controlled system, but the Internet Protocols, being decentralized, outgrew
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that space. The Internet has bred in its engineers a respect for decentralized
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systems which has in some cases led to anarchic political views. Just as
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IP packets have no single point of control, nor do Internet news groups.
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A feeling grows in the community that the whole Internet design process should
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be able to exist on its own account in a vacuum. It is not clear that this
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model has survived increase of scale, or impact with the commercial world,
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which happened at the same time. The lessons, though, have been well learned.
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The web, like IP, grew because it was decentralized. There was no central
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authority for web sites, so they could grow at will, appearing spontaneously.
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Bush's vision is of a decentralized academic society, in which no central
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figure or library is essential to the process.
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<P>
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Decentralization is often a myth. In real systems, the microscopic rules
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which ensure decentralization are enforced by some global authority if you
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peek under the covers. The IP protocols are defined in an RFC which sits
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at a definitive location. The happy intercourse between people in the street
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is safe only thanks to the kindly police officer on the corner and his
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hierarchical attachment to the supreme court.
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<H2>
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Fractal design
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</H2>
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<P>
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That brings us to another interesting feature of topologies, and that is
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their variation with scale. A few years ago, the world was fascinated (quite
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rightly) with fractal patterns. For those of you too young to remember the
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fad :-), a fractal pattern is one like the shape of a fern, which when you
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look at it closer and closer rewards you with a similar level of interest
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through many orders of magnitude. It is like the tree outside my office window,
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but it is not like my office block, whose interesting features are limited
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to a rectangle maybe 100 meters long, windows around a meter wide, and rivets
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a few millimeters wide.
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<P>
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Is society fractal? Yes, it certainly is. There is structure at the highest
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levels and the lowest levels. There are great big links formed by organizations
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which themselves are made up of smaller links. You can simplify society on
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a number of levels. You look at a newspaper and it will perhaps have a few
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sorties of domestic bliss or otherwise in the neighborhood, a story on the
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town, a story at state level, and (even in Boston), usually some stories
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about world affairs. (For those not from the area, the Boston paper's typical
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foreign news headline is "Boston woman has twins in China".)
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<P>
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People need to be part of the fractal pattern. They need to be part of organisms
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at each scale. We appreciate that a person needs a balance between interest
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in self, family, town, state and planet. A person needs connections at each
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scale. People who lack connections at any given scale feel frustrated. The
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international jet-setter and the person who always stays at home share that
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frustration. Could it be that human beings are programmed with some microscopic
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rules which induce them to act so as to form a wholesome society? Will these
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rules still serve us when we are "empowered" by the web, or will evolution
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give us no clues how to continue?
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<P>
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Look at web "home pages". "Home pages" are representative of people,
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organizations, or concepts. Good ones tend to, just like people, have connections
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of widely varying "length". Perhaps as the web grows we will be able to see
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fractal structure emerge in its interconnections. Perhaps we ought to bear
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this in mind as we build our own webs.
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<P>
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One of the reasons that the web spread was that the hypertext model does
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not constrain the information it represents. This has allowed people to represent
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topologies they need. We have found that people love to use trees, but like
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to have more than one, sometimes overlapping. We have found they need structure
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and involvement at all scales.
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<H2>
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Local decisions, global effect
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</H2>
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<P>
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The rules of web behavior are being defined now, by programmers meeting in
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groups, by lawyers and politicians. They are making decisions.
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<P>
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For example, one simple principle is end to end confidentiality. what a simple
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rule, that in cyberspace, privacy should be available between two people
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irrespective of physical location. This rule is opposed by those who feel
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that it would cause society to be come as a whole unstable.
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<P>
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Other principles is the right to anonymity.
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<P>
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Well established rules are that every object may have an identifier (a URL)
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such that when two people get renderings of the object using the same URL,
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they should get renderings of the same object.
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<P>
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Another rule is that the "GET" operation may not have side-effects.
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<P>
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As we move into the world of mobile code, of secure systems, of network payment,
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the new principles are being silently or not laid down. These principles
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will define the behaviour of a new machine, a new anthill, a new brain, which
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is the sum of ourselves and our creations.
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<P>
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Vannevar Bush's MEMEX was described as a complex machine. We see it now as
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a cog in a larger system. We feel fairly proud that we have built MEMEX-like
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machines. But now we have links, do we know what to do with them? When it
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comes to designing larger machine we are still banging the rocks together.
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<P>
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But we are at a time of great creativity, of great potential for change for
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better or worse, and there is a feeling that in fact we may be able to bring
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our collective teamwork up to a level at which we can ensure our survival.
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We have got "the great record" at our fingertips, and maybe we may yet learn
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to "grow in the wisdom of race experience" such that Vannevar Bush might
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be proud of us.
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<HR>
|
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<ADDRESS>
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©1995<A href="/hypertext/TBL_Disclaimer.html">TimBL</A>
|
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</ADDRESS>
|
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<P>
|
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<A href="/"><IMG alt="W3C" src="../../Icons/WWW/w3c_48x48.gif"></A>
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<A href="http://www.lcs.mit.edu/"><IMG alt="MIT/LCS" src="../../Icons/MIT/mit_48x48.gif"></A>
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<A alt="Other talks" href="../"><IMG src="../../Icons/WWW/talk_48x48.gif"></A>
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